


old love, new enemy (same face)

by Ashling



Category: Rebellion (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, F/M, Irish Civil War, Minor Character Death, Pining, Politics, Post-Canon, Reunions, Tragedy, Trying To Explain Why The Hell He Didn't Mention Elizabeth Butler At All In S2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25327300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: "I'm begging you.""While you're standing over me."In 1922, Elizabeth Butler got her freedom.
Relationships: Elizabeth Butler/Jimmy Mahon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: Juletide 2020





	old love, new enemy (same face)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyoftintagel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoftintagel/gifts).



In the end, it had been very simple. A voice on the telephone telling him that Elizabeth Butler had been released at last, asking him for any instructions. He was tempted to have her escorted to him—it was the sure move—but he thought of her young eyes laughing at him and he knew better. 

So he paid a boy from his old neighborhood to hang around the docks and deliver her a note. The boy was glad of the money and not at all interested in the intrigue; at that age, and without knowing what position Jimmy held now, it was all adults’ lovering to him, mystifying and uninteresting. So much the better for Jimmy. There were precious few people left who would remember his connection with Elizabeth now, and he didn’t need anyone else learning about it.

Five days after she came back to the country, she was still temporarily holed up in a cheap hotel and she had struck up a correspondence with a few of her old friends. He could have learned more, but he did not feel justified in expending resources on working out the details. He could have learned more, but he was afraid to.

And then, on the sixth day, she came to him.

It was late at night. Jimmy had made his weekly attempt to offer Donal and the kids some help; Donal had made his weekly offer to shoot him in the head. Gracie had looked tempted and Sadie wouldn’t look at him. As he went down the stairs, he thought he could see Minnie leaning against the wall, looking tired, but it was just another girl with dark hair. He was relieved when he found out. He had a hell of a lot to do without being haunted on top of it. On that thought, he went by the office to see if there was any news for him—he was especially anxious to get reports from a couple men in Cork—and he found Elizabeth there, sitting in a chair across from his secretary’s table. 

She was wearing an old grey coat several years out of style and a pair of boots that made her slightly taller than him. Prison had hardly changed her, except that her skin had gotten paler to the point of looking consumptive, and her dark eyes had sharpened their gaze to the point of looking dangerous. She had always been dangerous to him, never looked it. But now.

There was no protocol for what a man was supposed to do when a woman, who had not even been his lover really, was released from prison after a broken correspondence. Jimmy found himself talking to her as if she was some kind of long-lost relative whom he knew but did not trust. It was ridiculous. He could feel it was ridiculous even as he did it, like he was watching himself in a play. 

“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he said.

“What would you call six years?” said Elizabeth. 

That was her voice. He could feel his fingernails digging half-moons into the meat of his palms, and this was all actually happening. Through a fog of memory and the urge to loop a stray tendril of her hair back behind her ear, one sensible thought managed to fight its way to the surface: they were not quite alone. Aoife, his secretary, was still typing calmly at her desk. One of the significant downsides of employing the most intelligent and observant people he could find was that, at any given moment in his life, he was surrounded by the most intelligent and observant people he could find. And it was well-known that Jimmy Mahon never took a wife or even looked at a woman. The idea of anyone finding out why was excruciating.

“Let’s go into my office,” he said. When, against all his expectations, the surreality of the situation didn’t kill him on the spot, he went in. She followed, and he shut the door after her.

Inside, Jimmy moved around Elizabeth as she stood there with her coat still on. He turned on the brass desk lamp.

"Will you sit?" he said. He'd said it as a perfunctory question, expecting her to sit regardless, but she stayed standing. 

"I read your treaty, you know. Every last word of it." The accusation in _your treaty_ had him biting back the stupidest excuses. Yes, it was his treaty. When she looked at him like that, it was difficult to remember what he believed. Difficult, not impossible.  


"Even if it's too late for us, you can't say it's too late for a drink," he said. There was a bottle in his bottom drawer, and when he set it down on the desk, it made a solid sound. A safer proposition.  


"It's never too late for anything, Jim," she said, but she didn't say it like she believed it, and it hurt to hear the wistfulness in her voice when she said his name short.  


He tried not to let it show. "Well, come on, then. Convert me."

"You're Head of Intelligence, and I'm to convert you?" she said sharply.   


The sound of the cork popping was his answer. He tried not to look desperate.

After a moment, Elizabeth made her decision. He could see it in the way that she held herself, even before she took off the grey coat and hung it over the back of the chair and sat down. He poured out two glasses with a feeling of immense relief, and then got up and walked around his desk so he could hand her one of them. He leaned against his desk rather than sit with it between them. 

"How are you finding the city?" he said. That seemed a safe enough question.

"In some ways, it's completely different, and in other ways, it's the same." Elizabeth sipped, and thought about it, her dark eyes moving as she conjured up some memory. "There was a bakery I used to visit on my way to classes, back when I thought I could be a doctor." There was a little bitterness in _back when,_ but some fondness too, as if her past self was an entirely different woman. "I would get something with icing to wake me up if I had had a long night studying. Anyways, I went back there a few days ago, and the same baker was selling the exact same bread and cakes as before. He looked at me like he'd seen a ghost. Good raisin bun, though." She smiled, and it made him inordinately happy to think of her with her one piece of simple happiness, icing on top. It didn't last long.

"I miss the house the most," she said. "I walked by it, once, just to see, and I almost tried going in, but a woman caught me staring and wanted to know who I was, so I left."

"It's a shame you have to answer for your brother's mistakes," said Jimmy.

Elizabeth eyed him. "That's not what you would have said six years ago."

"What would I have said?"

"Probably something about how the house was too large for four people to live in. A monument to the banker's ego. And you would have been right."

"Ah, well, it's good to know that I'm still right about some things."

"Hypothetically would have been right, six years ago."

"Still." He ventured a half-smile, and was rewarded by a matching smile, a flick of her eyes downwards, like she couldn't quite help it. 

"What about you?" she said. "You look as though Dublin is treating you better than it used to."

"People are trying to kill me more often than they used to," he said. "But the suits are better, I admit." 

He was sure she would say, _I liked you better before,_ but to her credit she skirted the obvious and instead went for something he did not expect. "I was sorry to hear about Minnie," she said. "She was a good woman, and I know you were close."

"Thank you," he said, taking a sip so he could avoid her eyes. He wondered if Elizabeth knew the extent to which he'd been excommunicated from his own family, and he resisted the temptation to try and find out. "I was sorry to hear about your mother," he said instead. "She was a good woman too."

"She came to see me before they took me away," said Elizabeth to her glass. "She said she was proud of me for standing up for what I believed in, and I think, deep down, that some part of her sympathized with the cause. She always thought of Ireland as her home. And she always wrote to me on Sundays and Wednesdays."  


Jimmy braced himself for this to turn towards his own terminated correspondence, but Elizabeth seemed too lost in her reminiscences to make the connection. Or perhaps she'd mellowed a little with the whiskey. 

"I am glad she went quickly," said Elizabeth. "And I'm glad she went when she did. If she had lived to see me charged a second time, I think it would have been a terrible disappointment to her."

"Maybe she would have understood," said Jimmy. "You didn't expect her to support you after the rising, but she did. Maybe she would have surprised you again."

Elizabeth shook her head. "It's one thing to act as a medic. That's what I studied for. It's another thing to kill them." She finished her glass, and then looked up at him, eyes glinting. "I trained at university to save lives, and I killed a man; you trained at Frongoch to build the Republic, and now you're smothering it in the cradle. God does love to laugh."

"I thought you didn't believe in God."

"I don't." 

Jimmy knew he shouldn't ask her about it. He had known that even back when they were still writing letters to each other; she had referred to it, and he had referred to it, but never in detail. And she hadn't even mention the name of the prison guard she killed. That he had had to read in the paper. 

It wasn't spite that made him want to ask, or cruelty. It was only that when he looked at her, she seemed far away, and he thought if he could understand why she had killed, then maybe he would understand her now. Maybe they could understand each other. Not a conversion, but—

"Why did you do it?" he heard himself saying.

Elizabeth smiled at nothing, painfully. "Would you believe me if I said I didn't mean to do it?" she said, and then she looked up at him. To his shock, he found himself thinking that whatever he said next, it would mean something to her. She asked the question lightly and yet he felt he must be sure of his answer.

And he was sure of his answer. "Yes," he said. Not a letter for years, and yet he knew her. He was grateful for it. His throat was going thick. 

Her shoulders relaxed. She didn't speak for a little while, and then at last she said, "My own solicitor didn't believe that, when I told him."

"We're different men," Jimmy said.

"That you are," she said, and he felt fairly sure that there was some affection in it.

He sat down on the desk completely, no longer afraid of what might happen if he kept asking questions.  "What happened?" he said. "What did you mean to do?"

"I wanted to injure him badly enough that he would have to be in hospital for a long time. I wanted to make walking hard for him, so he couldn't work as a guard any more. He was hurting some of the girls."

Jimmy gripped the edge of the desk so hard his knuckles went white.

"You're not going to ask if he hurt me?" Elizabeth said.

"It's your story to tell," he managed.

Elizabeth didn't seem displeased with that. At any rate, she went on. "Well, he didn't. But the other girls didn't know anatomy, and the other girls didn't have to help in the infirmary. So I was the one who got the knife."

Jimmy tried to make sure that when he exhaled, it was long and slow and silent. 

"I only meant to hurt his leg, but it was nothing like—" She laughed once, mirthlessly. "It was nothing like dissections or surgery. Because of course he was moving around, and trying to kill me while he was at it. I can't blame him for that, I suppose. But he moved fast and my hand slipped and the knife went in deeper than it should have, and once it hit his femoral artery, it was all over. The blood pressure of the artery, it's like a fountain. I got covered in it. He got covered in it. It was a mess."  


This had happened five years ago, but it was fresh in her voice, and Jimmy said, "The first one is always the hardest," because that was what somebody said to him the first time he killed. Now, as then, he thought it a blindingly stupid thing to say, but he couldn't think of anything original when all he wanted to do was put his arms around her and tell her the truth, which was that she was one of the bravest women he'd ever known, and some lies too, like: _it's over now_. 

"It was hard because I didn't know what the hell I was doing," Elizabeth said. "It was hard because I make the same mistakes. I understand it in my head. I care. And then I go forth and I'm still somehow shocked by the truth of it, as if I didn't know what to expect. He had two sons. Twins. I think they'd be eleven years old, now."

"Elizabeth," he said softly.

Her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "I'm never ready," she said. "But this time, it's going to be different. I'm ready now. I understand what war is, I understand what killing is, I understand everything that you have to give up—I understand everything you've had to give up, Jim—but I'm going into it with my eyes open."

"Elizabeth," he said again, when what he meant was _please_.

"I was supposed to fight under Countess Markievicz last time," she said. "It's looks like I'll get my chance again."

"Why are you telling me this, then? Why did you come?" He deserved to know that much. 

"You're the head of Intelligence, I can hardly convert you. But you should go into this with your eyes open, too." Tears were silently trickling down her face. "I'm sick to death of all of this. I don't want to be here. I want to be at home, or making a home, and I want to see patients who haven't been shot or blown up, I want to see a little girl who broke her wrist playing in the yard who will be completely fine in six months. I want to have friends that don't die until they're sixty-five, I want to have my family all in the same city so I can bully my brother over the dinner table, I want children, _I want you._ But I'm not getting any of that. And I know I could have it—some of it—but do you not remember what we said to each other, the last time? What happened, Jim, did you fucking forget?" 

He was on his feet. He didn't know when that had happened.

"I remember," he said. He had to say it low and hard, or else it wouldn't come out at all.

"They couldn't stand against us because the people were against them. Not 'the people' from books and speeches, the people like farmers and butchers and even foolish young college students who wanted to be doctors one day. And now they're against you. Do you not see it?"

"I know there are some who won't—who can't—" How many times had he fought for this, so eloquently, and now Elizabeth was in front of him and he was collapsing like so much wet sand. "When Minnie died, her husband wouldn't let me come to the funeral. We fought together. I saved him from being tortured. He said if I came to the church I should dress to be buried myself. Of course I see it. But we're not the fucking British in disguise, Elizabeth, do you not think there's farmers and butchers and all the rest on our side, too? And with us, there's an end. With us, one day, you'll get your home and your peacetime patients and your long-lived friends. We have that. What do you have?"

"Hope," said Elizabeth. "Hope that we will have a country, the same thing that we had in 1916. I'm not the one that's changed."

They stared at each other for a long moment, Elizabeth's chin tilted up, defiant, Jimmy with a long slow sinking feeling.

"I guess we'll see each other under different circumstances, next time," she said, and she made as if to move.

"Don't," said Jimmy, like it hurt him. 

"Are you ordering me, or asking me?" Elizabeth said tiredly.  


"I'm begging you."

While you’re standing over me."

Jimmy had nothing to lose. That was always what precipitated a moment between himself and Elizabeth, always. The kiss in the church when he wasn't sure he would make it back; the press of her forehead against his shoulder when they both understood how little their bodies were their own any more. Her hand in his, but only when they were fleeing bullets. And now.  


He didn't expect it to have any effect, but he had to do it anyway. Elizabeth had held fast to him in ways that even years of silence couldn't sever, and so he stepped closer, got down on the ground, and knelt. 

"You're the only one left," he said, on his knees. "Please, Elizabeth."

"No," she said quietly. He accepted that; he had expected that. He didn't know what he'd been hoping for, and then she reached out and touched his face, and that—that was what he had been hoping for. His cheek against her knee, which was bony under the wool skirt. Her fingertips running through his hair, more tenderness than he'd been given in a long, long time. He closed his eyes.  


Everyone got an ending but him; that was his curse. But he did get reprieve.

When Elizabeth left his office, she didn’t say goodbye. She paused in the doorway, hand on the handle, eerily beautiful in the low lamplight.

“Up the Republic,” she said.  When he did not reply, she closed the door quietly behind her.


End file.
